


Impatient of Restraint

by Mussimm



Series: Works and Days [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, bottle episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-24 03:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7491156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mussimm/pseuds/Mussimm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven days post-canon ficlets. Jaime POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Full of Woe

Day or night, six sennights or twenty or two, he couldn't say anymore. When he heard her voice he tried to stand and run to her. His chains yanked him painfully back to the ground.

"I don't care what orders you have," her voice was muffled but he could hear her fury. " _Move._ "

The grinding of the door opening was followed by blinding light.

Brienne settled a single torch into a recess in the wall.

Jaime tried to find some emotion for her, something to respond to the horror and grief on her face. There was little left under layers and layers of snow and days upon days of darkness.

Brienne stood over him, eyes piercing, her heart writ large across her face. She had been betrayed.

With a clatter she sank to her knees, head bowed. His giantress brought low before him. "Ser Jaime. I didn't know."

"Brienne..." Jaime felt some flutter from his heart, something real and clear for the first time since he came to this dark place. Something warm, but hysterical. The wound in his side still radiated pain that rendered him half-drunk.

He extended his hand to her and she reached for him without hesitation, this foolish wench coming into his reach. Didn't she know? He was the Kingslayer, a kinslayer, a man with shit for honour. What a thing for any knight to do, to come within arms length of him while they held him captive. He felt Alton Lannister's throat collapsing in his hands.

Jaime pressed grateful kisses to her knuckles, a lump swelling in his throat. The wench looked as though she might cry.

"I didn't know," she repeated. "Please believe me, Ser Jaime, this was not my doing."

Even one handed, he could kill her. His chains were strong enough. He was strong enough.

"I'm cold, Brienne." The voice was disembodied from him, not from his own mouth, he was sure of it.

"You're ill." Suddenly she was all motherly worry. "This will not stand, I will see to it."

She made to rise and he clamped his hand around her wrist, forcing her to stay. He couldn't hold her, she was inhumanly strong in that moment, but she stayed put. He pressed her knuckles to his forehead. "Don't leave me."

She forced him to look at her. "I am coming back. Tell me you understand."

Sapphire eyes captured him, held him, wouldn't let him go. She cupped his face in her hands and without meaning to he hid his face in them, ice cold or burning hot, he couldn't tell. He wanted to weep for this one human touch after so long. Not just the length of his captivity. So long before that he couldn't even say. Didn't she know he could kill her? That he had killed before in attempts at freedom? Why did she stay so close?

Her eyes were wide, her lips parted, her skin snow white. Ashen hair the colour of winter sunlight and mouth the colour of a sweet pink cunt. Hot breath gusted across his face as she exhaled, her lips just inches from his own. Jaime leaned forward. "You're beautiful."

Brienne shot to her feet, the sudden absence of warmth leaving him colder than before she'd touched him. Jaime looked up at her towering above him, thoughts spinning and dissolving in his head before he could question her actions.

"You need a maester. Now."

She was gone, like she'd never existed in the first place.


	2. Loving and Giving

Brienne came back. An indistinct memory from the mire of his fever had assured him she would, but still he felt weak with relief at seeing her. She set down a pail of steaming water, a stack of fresh clothes and a tray of food.

Jaime strained to reach her with one hand, but instead of repeating their strange embrace she grabbed his manacles in turn and released them. The relief was dizzying, he hadn't realised how stiff and sore his entire body was until he was released. He was seized by the urge to lunge forward and enfold her in his arms. His wench, his white knight.

Before he could act she straightened and turned away. "Bathe, dress. I'll see to it that your chains are loosened and you are provided with some furnishings, as befits your station. A cot to sleep in will help you heal."

"Quite a change of heart," Jaime said, stripping out of his soiled rags while she had her back turned. He knelt by the pail of hot water.

"King Jon is regretful of your treatment."

 _King Jon fears half his lords will be killed by a raging warrior woman,_ Jaime filled in. The boy king had been equal parts furious and terrified when Glover had presented him with his prisoner. The smug lord was probably rotting in one of these cells along with him. Or would be now that Brienne had found out about their deception.

"So they're paying you in kind treatment to stop you rebelling," Jaime said. The warm, wet cloth against his skin soothed aches he had been unaware of. He hadn't thought to be clean again until his ransom, or not ever again in case of his death.

"King Jon knows I hold his sister's life in my hands. And he knows... He knows not to take my trust lightly."

Jaime bathed and dressed in silence, trying to interpret the stone in her voice, the way she refused to look at him. He possessed only snatches of the past few weeks or months, before the maester burned away the infection. But he remembered clearly how she fell to her knees and cradled his face, terror and affection warring in her eyes. He had thought them beyond this game of silence and prodding.

"Have I offended you, my lady?" Jaime asked as he finished dressing.

Brienne stole a glance at him that reminded him sharply of a rabbit in the sights of a hunter. She did not answer. "I have to put you back in chains. I'll be back later to supervise the blacksmith in extending them."

"You won't stay to keep me company? It does get terribly dull down here." He took up his place by the wall and extended his arms for shackling.

"Later, perhaps. I have a shift on the walls." She clamped the chains back in place and pushed the tray of food within his reach. She still did not meet his eye.

"Is Winterfell under siege?"

"When is Winterfell not under siege?" Brienne asked, just for a moment her taciturn self again. Jaime's merry laughter followed her from the cell.


	3. Fair of Face

Brienne stared at him blankly. "You miss her."

Jaime laughed and it echoed from the stone walls. Brienne flinched at the sound. "Are you asking if I'll run back to her? If the most beautiful woman in Westeros welcoming me home with a warm bed and a flagon of arbor red sounds appealing to me right now?"

The hurt on her face would have made him regret his words if her own weren't so foolish. She had done her best to make his captivity bearable, but it was still captivity. Jaime bitterly thought of all the pleasures of life he might be enjoying outside these walls, girding himself against thoughts of what accompanied those pleasures.

_War. Treason. Madness and wildfire._

Why did she have to make it so hard to talk to her sometimes? He didn't even mean it. It was Brienne who twisted it into some longing for a lost love. He'd been praying for a chance to escape Cersei, he had only asked after the Rock to know if he yet had any living family.

"And what of you, wench? Doesn't some part of you wish you were back mooning over Renly and hitting shining knights with blunted sticks?"

She seemed to sag at his words. Of course she wished to be back there with pretty Renly Baratheon. Tall and proud behind her tulip king with her fantasies of yielding her maidenhead to him. Yet she stood over him in judgement of wishing for simpler times. The great crime of asking after his family.

"I killed Stannis," she said. "I executed him in Renly's name. It's done."

_It's done._

Renly was done, the chapter of her life closed. Brienne was no longer a knight of summer, which was for the best as the raiment never suited her. Winter... winter was stern and unforgiving, demanded the most of men and laughed in the face of their hubris. Winter was far more her colour.

"There's no one to ransom me, Brienne," Jaime said. The words felt flat and muted and full of all his despair.

"I will not let you - "

Jaime cut her off. "Even if spring comes, even if peace comes, I have no home to return to. I will never walk out of these dungeons a Lannister of the Rock. My family is gone."

Brienne straightened to her full height, a new confidence in her. Why could she feel nothing but self-pity when her own interests were at stake, yet be hard as iron when others were under siege? "I will ask the maester to send another raven south. You will not walk out of Winterfell alone, Ser Jaime."


	4. Bonnny and Blithe and Good and Gay

"It was a gift." Brienne's face was flushed from the wine, but it flushed darker as Jaime ran a hand down the direwolf pelt that lay beside him on his cot. "I tried to return it, but that isn't the done thing among wildlings."

It was the way she wouldn't meet his eyes that gave the game away and Jaime laughed. "You have a wildling suitor."

"Oh, shut up."

"Well, wench, we all have to find some way of keeping warm up here."

"You had best be talking about the pelt, Ser Jaime." She took another drink from her wineskin, a drop of red lingering on her lips. "I've enough trouble convincing them that they're not welcome in my bed without further debate."

Them? The laughter died on his lips. He had imagined a single eccentric wildling making unwelcome overtures. Now his mind supplied him with a different story, wherein she left his cell and climbed back up to a flock of admirers, each offering pelts and meat and the bone-daggers she now wore at her hip.

He ran his hand through the fur again. "It is a fine gift. Finer than all the gold in Casterly Rock in this winter."

"I'll trade you, if you like."

Jaime smiled again, the warmth of the wine and her gentle japes holding his fears at bay.

"Wine suits you well, my lady. I may even see you smile before the night is through."

The flickering light from the torches cast her in deep shadow. His head swimming from drink he could see the absurdity of all this. She had free rein of him, once the door closed behind her he was not a prisoner at all, free of his chains, handed razors to shave and within reach of her sword. The whole bloody keep knew he wouldn't touch her, wouldn't try to run if it meant injuring her in the process.

Yet she still sat in the corner of the room, as far from him as she could get. Jaime drank from his skin. He knew the reason. Only an idiot denied what he already knew. She sat there to avoid some accidental brush of hands or knees, to ward off the moment when one of them was overcome with reckless courage and touched the other. She sat there to stop the friction between them from jumping up another peg.

As if it wasn't already agony.

"So what's his name? Ser Direwolf?" Jaime asked. "I take it he is your most ardent suitor."

"Tormund Giantsbane." She blushed and looked away. A bright, hot pressure rose in Jaime's chest. That was _his_ blush and if Tormund Giantsbane wanted it, he would have to duel him for it.

"Let me out of here and I'll hunt you a dozen direwolves."

"Shut up," Brienne said with a small smile. "You're drunk."


	5. Full of Grace

The cell seemed suffocating. She still came every day, with food and water and hope. But the weight of everything was becoming unbearable. The memory of kissing her knuckles, the knowledge she was being courted, whatever rift had come between them during his fever that stopped her really talking to him when sober.

"Why do you come here?" Jaime asked, his head buried in his arms.

"I wouldn't leave you alone down here. It's my fault that you were captured."

"So you come here through guilt alone?" he asked helplessly, then cursed himself. What kind of lackwit would say such a thing? Push for something he couldn't accept even if she was free to give it? No, they were still in the jaws of this trap and if he made her choose between all or nothing her answer had to be nothing. She opened her mouth, outrage already written in her eyes, but he cut her off. "Forget I said that. Forgive me."

Another mistake, as that just drew from her the blue-eyed look that made his stomach twist into knots.

"Always," she murmured.

How long could they go on like this? It must have been easier for her, she had a life outside these walls whilst the stone pressed in on him. "Will you at least tell me what I've done to make you so distant?"

"Is your side still bothering you?"

"Don't change the subject."

"You called me beautiful," Brienne blurted, the words rolling out on the momentum of her previous question.

A silence settled over them. She was an incandescent red in the torchlight, her eyes fixed on the ground. Jaime couldn't quite grasp her complaint, so mired as it was in their history, both shared and alone.

" _Seven hells_ , Brienne," he sighed. "I was delirious with fever. Surely you don't think I recovered for a moment to make sport of you."

"No, of course not."

"And you were beautiful." _You still are._

Brienne blanched, eyes wide and alarmed. Jaime smothered a groan against his arms. He couldn’t take much more of her self-doubt. Any seductress considered it a fine art to make herself seem like the only sunlight in a man's world. Brienne did it simply by existing. In his fever he remembered her white gold and pink and blue, warm and forgiving, succour after his fear and loneliness. He also remembered leaning treacherously forward, seeking more of her.

He'd tried to kiss her.

Jaime swallowed a lump in his throat, the enormity of what he'd done settling on his shoulders. She wore hurt feelings like an armour about her and he had wounded her grievously in his delirious state. If he hadn't called her ugly so often, if she hadn't heard compliments followed by laughter so often, mayhaps there would be no quarrel. But he had and she had and now he was lost. It might take him a decade or another maiming to reach beyond those walls again.

He grabbed his cup and raised it in a mock toast. Earnestness would only wound her more now, he would have to settle for levity. "If I was so far gone I ought to have died. Let us celebrate my good health."


	6. Works Hard for a Living

“Would you have me leave Tarth to ruin?"

Jaime laughed, the sound odd and thin as he paced his cell, sick to death of captivity. "Yes. You hand me over to the wolves and now you take away the only sword protecting me from them."

Brienne’s face set tight. She knew him well enough to know he spoke out of anger. He should have known she wouldn’t rise to the bait. _She is going to die and be forgotten in the snow and I cannot talk her out of it._

She was in full armour for once, battered but gleaming. It was some twisted reversal of roles, he was supposed to be the beautiful one and she the ugly wench, now he was a rotting prisoner and she the knight in shining armour, decorated with her many victories.

"You will die," he tried. "From cold or starvation or bandits."

"We're going by sea."

"Pirates, then."

The corner of her mouth tugged up. "Pirates don't have icebreakers. Kings do."

"So it's the little king sponsoring this mission. The second you've left he'll have me in a pillory."

"Podrick will-"

"You're not even taking Podrick?" Jaime swiped a hand down his face as if he could wipe away some of his mounting panic. "Robbet Glover and his thugs will have the boy hanging by his feet from the rafters in no time. He can't protect me."

Brienne gave him that glorious, haughty glance she gave whenever she thought he was giving her too little credit. "Do you really think I've left Glover in any state to attack you?"

He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. Of course she hadn't. "Did you kill him?"

"No."

"You're going to _die_."

Brienne shifted her weight, becoming annoyed with this line of conversation. "Tarth won't survive without leadership the whole winter. The sun still rises sometimes, I can't leave it any later. The ship is fast. I will return in two moons."

"You won't return at all."

Brienne reached out and seized his wrist, stopping his pacing. Jaime's breath caught in his throat. The careful distance between them dissolved and she was _right there_ , cold as snow with flushed cheeks and lips, her nose tipped in pink. Her eyes had caught him again, like a hunter stalking a deer but refusing to make a killing blow.

"I will return to you. On my sword, on my princess's life, on my father's grave. I swear it, I swear it, I swear it."

He was frozen to place, heart pounding as she spoke the oath, thrice sworn. He could reach up and touch her, brush her hair from her face or run his thumb over her lip. He could kiss her and be done with it, stop caring about the consequences for both of them. The Starks and Lannisters both would turn on them, savage them. Did he care anymore? They could fight each one, burn down Winterfell and Casterly Rock both.

Jaime looked into her sapphire eyes and something curdled inside him. No. He had committed sins in his life, but he would never let himself corrupt her so badly.

He smiled. "I'll see you in two moons, then."


	7. Far to Go

The day the king came, Jaime thought he was going mad. He was half ready to end it all the next time Pod brought him a razor. The darkness had intensified somehow, the torches could no longer pierce the shadows in every corner. When he lay in his cot and looked at the ceiling he imagined he could see the stars, spread out brilliant across a pitch black sky, the Evenstar his point of guiding light.

"Your grace," he rasped. "I would bow, but..." He gestured to his chains in mock exasperation. 

"Set him loose, bring him his sword," Jon commanded.

So it was to be trial by combat, Jaime assumed. He had been waiting for the day his stay of execution elapsed without Brienne to reinforce it. It couldn't have come soon enough. In this darkness without her he would eventually become a gibbering madman. 

Stark's guards removed his shackles and tossed his sword and armour at his feet.

"So who am I to fight, then?" Jaime asked. 

"The war is over, Kingslayer, you're free to go."

"What?"

King Jon's grave face was showing signs of wear. He'd aged a decade in six months. "The war is over. Only two houses fight now, the Living and the Dead."

"So I'm to be drafted into your army, is that the size of things?"

"I meant as I said. If you want to brave the snows alone, you are free to do so. Queen Danaerys and I offer full amnesty for past crimes to all those who fight at the Wall. My host leaves tomorrow, so choose soon."

"Brienne," Jaime said. "Where is Brienne?"

"She'll return in a moon's turn, we can't wait for her."

"But you've heard from her."

Jon nodded shortly. "She arrived on Tarth in good health."

A knot loosened in Jaime's chest. "And my family?"

"We have no news from the south. Ravens freeze in the open air now. But no Lannister forces have joined us on the Wall."

Jaime eased himself to his feet, trying to steel himself to carry the weight of sword and armour after so long. This wasn't how he imagined his captivity ending, but it was by no means the worst scenario his mind had conjured up. 

He twirled the sword in his hand, revelling in the comforting weight of it. "At least I'll get to see some sunlight before I die."

King Jon offered a grim smile and swept from the room. "The sun doesn't shine anymore, Kingslayer."


End file.
